Chapter 6: The Two-Truths Debate — A Theorem-Shaped Review¶

Chapter 6 of Part 18 said that the dispute among the several readings of the two truths was the proper subject of the next part; this chapter redeems the promise. First the candidate readings are put in line. Reading one, two domains: the two truths are two domains of objects, the domain of conventional truth and the domain of ultimate truth, each with things of its own. Reading two, two cognitions: the two truths hang upon two kinds of cognition, what ordinary knowledge obtains being the conventional and what the knowledge of the noble ones obtains being the ultimate. Reading three, two teachings: the two truths are two gates of verbal teaching and have nothing to do with objects or with principle. Reading four, two levels of assertion: conventional truth is the legitimacy of assertions at the E1 and E2 levels, and ultimate truth is T itself — which is the formal placing of Part 18. Three criteria are laid down first: the reading adds no new entity; it keeps the Preservation Theorem standing; and the hierarchy clause can be stated within it.

Measuring the schools one by one for distance. The Sarvāstivāda, the old home of the two-domains reading: to speak by conventional reasoning of there being a pot and the like is real and not false. The words by a reasoning already stand in that sentence, so that a truth's being a truth already hangs upon the manner of speaking by a reasoning, and half a step is on the side of speech already. But the roster of real existents still keeps a domain of ultimate truth standing, the field of dharma-substances that do not break up under analysis. By criterion one it is out at once: every resident of that ultimate domain is a candidate subject for a D3-type claim, and the machine of Part 18 has passed judgment on each of them in turn.¹

Bhāviveka, the qualifier reading: every ultimate proposition carries the qualifier in true nature, and the target area is nailed down sentence by sentence. This is in substance to make the ultimate a mark of the domain of application, running in the same direction as clause (a) of the hierarchy; of all the schools it is the step that comes nearest to the theorem-shaped reading. The danger lies in reification: should the qualifier in true nature be promoted from a mark into a domain, as though there were a place called the ultimate, the reading has fallen back into the two-domains reading. Bhāviveka's own usage stops on the side of the mark. The Karatalaratna says it plainly — it is with respect to ultimate truth that the conditioned is declared empty, and not with respect to the conventional. In that sentence the ultimate is introduced by the words with respect to: it is a mode of evaluation and not a place.

Candrakīrti, the lawfulness reading: the conventional is validated entirely by what the world commonly admits, and the ultimate sets up no separate domain, being spoken of only as that in which the noble ones see nothing. One guard is to be recorded. Should the knowledge of the noble ones be raised into a really existent capacity, and the ultimate be made the private object-domain of that knowledge, the two-cognitions reading is reified into a variant of the two-domains reading; and Candrakīrti's formula, that seeing nothing is the seeing, is exactly what stops that opening.

Jizang, the two-teachings reading: only gates of teaching, having nothing to do with objects or with principle. It passes all three criteria. It adds no entity, a gate of teaching being no thing. The Preservation Theorem has a place to sit, conventional truth going on as before. The hierarchy clause can be stated, the four tiers being an iteration of clause (c). What is left to separate it from reading four is a dimension and nothing else: the gates of teaching rise and fall with the capacity of the hearer, while the domain of application is marked out by the quantifier; the one is a pedagogical coordinate, the other a logical one.

Three sentences of ruling. First, the two-domains reading is out: whoever makes the two truths into two domains has put every resident of the second domain inside the scope. Second, the two-cognitions reading survives only with a clause added against its being turned into a domain: so long as knowledge is not set up as an E3 item, it degenerates into an epistemological statement of the lawfulness reading and carries no danger of its own. Third, the two-teachings reading and the two-levels-of-assertion reading are isomorphic: both place the division of the two truths on the side of speech, and both take the topmost level to be a silence upon which nothing can be depended and from which nothing can be obtained; they differ in their coordinate systems. What is inter-translatable covers the whole of the logical content; the untranslatable remainder is the dimension of fit to the hearer (at what moment, to a hearer of what capacity, which tier is to be spoken), and that is a matter for pedagogy, on which logic has no vote to cast. Hence the final gathering: under the theorem-shaped review the four readings of the two-truths debate converge into one reading plus one pedagogical parameter. The remaining debatable point is logged as it stands: whether the dimension of fit to the hearer really carries no logical content. An objector may begin again from the index of opponents attached to the four tiers; this book registers the point and passes no final ruling upon it.

References¶